'Buying dead bodies in Indonesia': Anna Woods talks research, rabbit holes, and LIT

Debut novelist Anna Woods set out to write Lit, her new novel, with the premise of 'what would you do if someone you knew came back from the dead?'. Many readers will know her already as a short story author from Tāmaki Makaurau, but Lit explores different territory. Kete chatted with her about how it came to fruition, her favourite New Zealand author Janet Frame, and the strangest rabbit holes she followed doing research for this book.

Kia ora Anna! Lit is your debut novel release, but you’ve won the Sargeson Prize, been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and had plenty of short stories published already! Tell us how Lit came to be in amongst all this?

Short stories are my first love – they are such a joy to write. I always dreamt of writing a novel and have written other novel manuscripts, but I struggled with an invisible block. It was only when I studied structure that I realised I had been writing novels as though they were very long short stories. I write short stories intuitively, and can hold the whole story in my head, but a novel is too long for that. Realising this helped me develop a more story-forward approach to novel writing, which made writing LIT easier.

My unpublished manuscripts were literary fiction, in the same vein as my stories. They were “quieter” (which in publishing is a euphemism for slow), so I was determined with LIT to write something with more pace. The premise – what would you do if someone you knew came back from the dead – lent itself to suspense. I hadn’t written anything like it before, and it required a lot of reading and research, but the story drove me on.

What was the most fun thing about writing it?

This novel surprised me by how easy it was to write. I don’t mean that I didn’t labour over every word, because of course I did. But the friction I mentioned earlier had been removed. The structure of a suspense novel gave me a beautiful scaffolding to build the story around. Of course, I knew nothing about faking a death, so that led me into some fascinating rabbit holes. Insurance fraud, escaping debt, buying dead bodies in Indonesia, employing digital pollution to occlude your online presence – I came across some crazy stories.

How has the publication process been? Did anything surprise you?

Author admin is real! The work required in preparing a book for publication is so different to the creative work of writing the story. I expected the editing process, but not the many arcane and frankly bizarre tasks. From setting up author pages on many platforms, signing various bureaucratic contracts for events, ordering merchandise, filling out narrator briefs for the audiobook, posing for author headshots, to the author questionnaire where you expound upon the themes of your book. I joked on one of my social posts it felt like sitting an exam on my own book.

 Who is your ideal reader? Who needs to read Lit?

My ideal reader loves a slow burn suspense, populated with infuriating characters making terrible life choices. My dream reader has read Clarissa, by Samuel Richardson and recognises how I’m trying to subvert that narrative, but I realise million-word-long 18th century novels is a niche interest. I think architects will enjoy seeing themselves represented, even if it is not always flattering. And I’ve been told that people are enjoying the portrayal of Tāmaki Makaurau, which is featured in our literature less often than it should be.

Who needs to read LIT? Anyone who has suffered from the systems of control we all live under. Whether that is through class, colonialism, the patriarchy, surveillance capitalism, or simply being gaslit by someone you trust.

Tell us what inspires you? An author, a book, a place, or whatever you like…

My biggest inspiration is other books. I love reading a book and thinking: I wish I had written that. As I mentioned, Clarissa was part of the genesis of LIT. The villain is perhaps literature’s greatest gaslighter, and I wanted to reimagine the emotional arc of that story in a contemporary setting. My current writing project is still nebulous, so I’m not ready to share the inspiration (these things have a tendency to shift and change), but I will say it was a book which sparked the initial idea – this time by one of the great modernists. So my answer is reading. Reading inspires me.

What Aotearoa New Zealand book do you wish you’d written? 

There are so many amazing contemporary writers in this country, but my favourite local author is Janet Frame. She had such a poetic sensibility and love of language. Owls Do Cry, particularly, had such an impact on me when I was growing up. My aunt gave me a beautiful hardback edition of her collected autobiographies, and it is one of my most treasured volumes. What a singular writer she was.

What’s been your best read this year so far? 

Do I have to choose only one? There have been some phenomenal books released this year, but I’ve been busy reading fellow debuts, so I haven’t got to some of the year’s big hitters yet. I managed to read Brawler, by Lauren Groff before things got too crazy (see my aforementioned love of short stories). She is such a master of the form, and it is a perfect entry point for anyone who isn’t sure if they like short stories. With Ingrid Horrocks' collection All Her Lives taking out the top prize at the Ockhams, short stories are having a moment. It’s the perfect time to give a collection a go.

And last, but definitely not least, what are you writing next?

I can’t say too much, as I don’t want to spoil the magic while I’m writing, but it is another suspense novel, this time set in the art world. The main character is a performance artist, and some of the research I’ve been doing is wild – definitely truth is stranger than fiction territory – so that has been a lot of fun.

Lit is available in all good bookstores now.